when the playing field is so uneven. Roughly 40% of students at my kids’ school have 50% more time to complete their tests —INCLUDING the ACT and SAT, many have private admissions counselors, they almost all have test prep tutors, they have access to far more AP offerings than the typical public high school student, and they have parents who do things like hire a PR firm to get their kid’s research project (which they also paid to get him involved with) covered by the media (yes this happened). In a purely objective merit based system, the top 50% of students at my kids’ school would totally dominate all but the top 1% of kids at most public schools on paper.

So some sort of consideration should be made for the relative advantage or disadvantage the student has had. I think socioeconomic factors can and should be considered. I’m glad that skin color can no longer be considered.

I do agree that the universities need to move away from social engineering and focus on merit, but merit needs to consider more than just objective criteria.